With all due respect, I was somewhat astounded by this post. Safety professionals in academia work very hard to provide a safe and healthy environment in which to teach, learn, and conduct research. I consider it an honor and a privilege to work with my administration, faculty, students, and fellow staff members to promote laboratory safety and safe work practices.

Academic departments are inherently complex in nature and one of first things that safety professionals learn in academia is how to effectively collaborate with all constituents to achieve common goals. We should not paint with broad strokes and label all faculty as non-compliant. To do so would be unfair and untrue.

Barbara

>>> <ACTSNYC**At_Symbol_Here**CS.COM> 8/2/2012 8:48 AM >>>Brandon, you said in part:

"My point is, it is already extremely difficult for large universities and PIs to enforce basic safety rules in their labs such as lab coats, shoes, and goggles. Enforcing something like non-synthetic clothing underneath all that would be an absolute nightmare."

But that's the crux of the AG's agreement with the Board of Regents. The AG is telling them what they ALWAYS should have known: That the school, as the employer, is responsible for safety. They cannot put it off on the PI's, paid consultants or any other entity. If they do not empower their PIs safety people to ENFORCE the rules, the buck will stop with the employer.

The very fact that you write this is evidence that your school is not taking it's responsibility seriously. The school cannot get away with blaming you or anyone else when it is the school that hires and sets up the chains of command that is supposed to get safety done. And that process starts with a system of enforcing the rules.

Everyone should just stop complaining about the difficulty of getting faculty to follow the rules. You already know the rules and so do the faculty. They just damn don't want to comply and we all know that. This discussion is done. As we say in my neighborhood, fagettaboutit.

Instead, all of these discussions should be on a single subject: How to get administrators to protect themselves and the school by giving you all the authority to do your dang jobs.

My confusion as I read these discussions is trying to figure out how people, who are obviously as smart as you all, would accept a position in which you are expected to do a job without being given the power and authority to do that job? Why would you waste your lives like this?

The content of this page reflects the personal opinion(s) of the author(s) only, not the American Chemical Society, ILPI, Safety Emporium, or any other party. Use of any information on this page is at the reader's own risk. Unauthorized reproduction of these materials is prohibited. Send questions/comments about the archive to secretary@dchas.org.The maintenance and hosting of the DCHAS-L archive is provided through the generous support of Safety Emporium.